A Sunni's Best Friend
After spending hundreds of billions of dollars to fight a war to topple Saddam and remove his Sunni bretheren from power, it turns out that the U.S. has become the Sunnis' best friend. Now, I don't think that necessarily means good friend, just the best of what few choices there are. Without U.S. protection, Shiites and Kurds would almost certainly set about exacting revenge on those who made their lives miserable for the past few, oh, decades.
It struck me how peculiar this set-up must seem to much of the world. For example, here in China, there is still a deep, visceral hatred of the Japanese for what they did to China during World War II. Of course, these feelings have been honed and exploited by the government. But still. I get Chinese people asking me all the time why Americans are so friendly with the Japanese. After all, they bombed Pearl Harbor in a surprise attack, starting a war that killed hundreds of thousands of our best young men. They are puzzled by my answer, which is simply that Americans look at the situation and say, "We won. End of story. That was then, this is now."
Of course, it's a bit more complex than that. I had an uncle, who died in the late '80s I think, who detested the Japanese over that whole world war thing until the day he died. But you know what? He had a Japanese-American priest preside over his funeral, and his family thought it was hilarious. "Well, we know he's dead because if he knew who his priest was, he'd be up out of that grave in a flash!" they joked. It took time for many Americans to "get over" their suspicion of Japan, if they ever did. And of course there was the fear of Communist expansion that helped spur the U.S. to forge such tight economic and political ties with Japan.
But certainly things could have been a lot worse for the Sunnis. Most of the wars throughout history and even around the world today, aren't fought and resolved with such considerations in mind.
It struck me how peculiar this set-up must seem to much of the world. For example, here in China, there is still a deep, visceral hatred of the Japanese for what they did to China during World War II. Of course, these feelings have been honed and exploited by the government. But still. I get Chinese people asking me all the time why Americans are so friendly with the Japanese. After all, they bombed Pearl Harbor in a surprise attack, starting a war that killed hundreds of thousands of our best young men. They are puzzled by my answer, which is simply that Americans look at the situation and say, "We won. End of story. That was then, this is now."
Of course, it's a bit more complex than that. I had an uncle, who died in the late '80s I think, who detested the Japanese over that whole world war thing until the day he died. But you know what? He had a Japanese-American priest preside over his funeral, and his family thought it was hilarious. "Well, we know he's dead because if he knew who his priest was, he'd be up out of that grave in a flash!" they joked. It took time for many Americans to "get over" their suspicion of Japan, if they ever did. And of course there was the fear of Communist expansion that helped spur the U.S. to forge such tight economic and political ties with Japan.
But certainly things could have been a lot worse for the Sunnis. Most of the wars throughout history and even around the world today, aren't fought and resolved with such considerations in mind.
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